


Against The World

by bewaretheboojum



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU, DCU (Comics), Nightwing (Comics), Robin (Comics)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Minor Violence, Motorcycles, POV First Person, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-05
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-06-10 06:58:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19496026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bewaretheboojum/pseuds/bewaretheboojum
Summary: Dick doesn't understand why Tim's pulling away from him.





	Against The World

**Author's Note:**

> Written with the encouragement of eustassya. 
> 
> Thanks so much to njw and salazarastark for the beta help!

As a rule, I'm not a jealous guy.

I swear.

Ask anyone I’ve ever dated and they will say that I’m not a jealous person. 

Almost to a fault. 

Most of the time, I really have no need to be jealous. I mean, what’s the point?

I don't care if the people I date get flirty with the barista, go dancing without me, or let someone else buy them a drink. 

I really don't care about stuff like that.

Life is for the living, and life’s too short to get hung up on simple interactions.

Like I said, I'm just not the jealous type.

Usually.

With Tim, though, things are a little different. 

With Tim, I’ll admit, I can get a little possessive. 

With good reason though. 

I feel like I was the first person to recognize something special in Tim. It was me he came to, after all. In the beginning.

Bruce wasn’t Tim’s first stop on the superhero train. Neither was Alfred or even Superman. It was me. 

He started with me.

And he stayed with me too. Through all of it. 

He stayed through Bruce’s broken back and Jean Paul’s craziness. He stayed with me when I suited up as Batman and struggled through the weight of the mantel. He stayed through No Man’s Land and murder accusations against Bruce. He stayed through Blockbuster and bombs. He stayed through Jason being nuts and Damian being an ass.

Even when he left, during the Gang War or Bruce being ‘dead’, he always kept in touch. He always came back. He always had a smile and a smart observation when I needed them most. He always wanted to help. 

He always did help.

And through it all, I was always so proud of him, so in awe of his brain, his perseverance and his drive. No matter what happened and no matter what went down, who we lost and what choices we made. When things got tough, it would be Tim and me against the whole damn world.

Like it always was. 

Like it always would be. 

Then Oz happened. 

I thought we had lost him.

For real this time. 

And I couldn’t deal with it. I couldn’t grieve or even think about him. Because if I did, even for a second, I’d wonder if the reason he was gone was because, when he came to me that night all those years ago, I didn’t immediately shut him down. 

I’d wonder if maybe I was the reason he was gone. Because I pulled that driven, loyal, brilliant kid closer and closer to me, rather than driving him back and driving him away. I knew how dangerous it all was. I faced my share of close encounters with death, and then there was Jason whose blood was barely dry at that point. Even knowing what I did, I still didn’t push Tim away from all the chaos and the pain that this life holds.

I think I knew, even then, that I needed him.

So when he came back, ostensibly okay, I was so relieved and thankful that at first I didn’t realize he was putting a distance between the two of us. 

When he went off to Ivy, I never even considered the idea that things would change. 

Sure, Tim would be in a different place with different people, but he had been before. And when it counted, when I needed him, he would come back.

Tim and me against the world.

Just like it always was.

It didn’t occur to me that maybe this time things were different. 

Not at first.

At first, it was just fewer texts and fewer movie nights. It was that he was slower to smile and his laugh sounded forced. It was that he turned down train surfing and pizza runs. It was that he stopped sleeping over and just dropping in for visits. It was that he stopped calling. It was that he stopped showing me the photography projects he was working on.

It was almost a year before it dawned on me that this was more than him settling into college. When I finally did, I started to push back.

I texted him more. He answered less.

I called him more. He sent me to voicemail.

I asked for help tuning up my motorcycle. He suggested I ask Harper for help.

I set up movie nights with the sibs. He skipped them.

I asked for help on cases. He suggested I work with Damian instead of him.

After a month of barely hearing from him, I decided to take matters into my own hands. Fortune favors the bold, right? So, I did what every obsessively stalkerish Bat would do: I hacked his class schedule and made a plan to essentially kidnap him.

It wasn’t hard to get Tim’s class schedule, which looked daunting for a normal genius twenty-something. It looked absolutely impossible for a genius twenty-something who was also moonlighting in a cape and tights. 

I deliberately picked out my prettiest motorcycle, for bait. I had a black Ducati Monster 821 with dark blue accents along with a few improvements. Tim and I had worked together on this same bike a lot over the past few years, making it faster, quieter, safer, and automated.

I knew Tim loved to ride it. Whenever he visited in the past, this was the bike he borrowed. 

Fifteen minutes before Tim’s last class was set to let out for the day, I pulled up in front of the building listed on his class schedule and cut the power on my bike. I pulled off my helmet and watched the front door of the building. 

When Tim finally came out of the building, he was ringed by three other people his age. A boy and two girls that I didn’t recognize were chatting with him as they exited the building. They were all looking a little stressed and talking animatedly to each other as they moved down the sidewalk towards the street. 

When they came in closer to where I had parked my bike, I called out to Tim and all four of them looked over at me. Tim’s expression shifted for a moment as he caught sight of me, blanking to something close to neutral before shifting into an easy smile I knew was fake.

I hated Tim’s fake smiles. I knew way too much about the real ones to settle for the fake ones.

Tim and his friends shifted course and walked over to me. Tim said a breezy hello and I grinned at him.

He was wearing a long grey coat over a dark t-shirt, a scarf slung loosely around his neck, the same light blue color as the wool hat he pulled haphazardly over his head. His too long hair came out from underneath the hat, curling in little ducktails around his ears and the nape of his neck.

“Hey, Timbo. Down for a slice?” I asked. “Looks like you had a long day.”

“Hey Tim, who is this and what is he riding?” One of the girls, a blonde asked. She walked in close to me and checked out what I hoped was my bike and not my butt.

“This is Dick. He is riding a very, very nice Ducati,” Tim said, motioning to my bike with a careless gesture.

“Hey, Dick,” said the boy, grinning at me in a way that was very familiar. 

Apparently Tim hung out with idiots who thought dick jokes were funny. Great.

“Hey,” I said. 

“This is Bernard,” Tim said, gesturing to the boy and then the two girls. “And this is Zoanne and Callie.” 

“Nice to meet you,” Callie said, with a smile, taking a step back from my bike. Zoanne murmured a soft agreement, eyeing me uncertainty.

“The three of us were actually going to go back to Bernard’s place and figure out how the hell we’re going to get the lab work done for our Organic Chemistry class,” Tim said, his voice was friendly but regretful. 

“Oh, don’t worry about that, Timbo,” Bernard drawled, wrapping a way too friendly arm around Tim’s shoulders and grinning at me. “We can talk cyclopentanes any time. You go get a slice with your friend Dick.”

The way the kid said the last sentence made me want to punch him in the face, but I just smiled and looked expectantly at Tim. You almost couldn’t tell Tim was hesitating when he responded.

“Yeah, alright. I’ll text you guys later to figure out the details.”

Tim and Bernard did this weirdly complex handshake while the girls stood by clearly trying not to roll their eyes. Then, the three of them took off down the street talking intently with one another and occasionally glancing back at us while I dug out my spare helmet for Tim.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt study time,” I said cheerfully, handing Tim a black helmet. Tim took it from me and paused, looking down at it while he held it in his hands, not answering for a long minute.

“No, it’s fine,” Tim said, looking up to smile at me again. He tugged off his hat and stuffed it into a pocket of his coat before pulling the helmet down over his head.

The smile was fake. Again.

Tim secured the strap under his head before sliding on the bike behind me, wrapping his arms around my chest and tucking his legs in behind mine. 

It felt…

It felt too good to have him pressed against my back. 

Too right.

Too familiar.

I turned over the engine, pulled back into traffic and took us deep into Gotham City in search of pizza.

^*^*^*^

After the night I tracked him down at school, I didn’t see Tim for almost six weeks. 

The pizza place I picked wasn’t great, the conversation between us was stilted, and I could tell Tim’s head wasn’t there with me. I gave him a few days to get his head straight before trying to get in touch with him again. But he kept giving me the run around.

I stopped by his campus three more times but he was either not using the front doors of the buildings, or he was keeping an eye out for me and dodging me when he spotted me.

To be honest, I was looking for an excuse to barge back in on his life when Damian texted me one night after patrol.

**Is Drake back on his feet, yet? I have not seen him on patrol all week.**

**Back on his feet? What happened?** I texted back within seconds of getting the text, a thrill of worry shooting through me.

**I do not know the details. He was limping when he came back to the Cave with Father a few nights ago.**

**Did B say what was wrong? Did something happen to him?**

**I did not ask Father what happened. I assumed Drake would have told you all about it…**

Tim hadn’t told me all about it. 

There was a time when I knew about every muscle strain or papercut the guy got. I knew the patterns of the scars that littered his skin almost as well as I knew my own. I’d sewn up his cuts, treated his wounds, massaged his strained muscles, and iced his injured joints. 

And now he comes home limping from patrol with an injury that keeps him off the street for days and I don’t hear a word about it?

I picked up my phone and pulled up Tim’s number. The phone rang three times before he sent it to voicemail. I didn’t bother leaving a message. I knew he wouldn’t listen.

I tried texting instead, pulling up the messaging program and typing out a note to him.

**Tim, can you call me? Damian said you got hurt last week.**

No response. Just a read receipt.

**Tim? Please call me back.**

No response.

The worry I was feeling bled in anger as the minutes ticked by without a response. Almost without consciously thinking about it, I got back on my bike again. This time, I did what I should have done when he started hiding from me. I pulled up the tracer program on the screen on my motorcycle.

A few years back, Bruce had implanted all of us with GPS chips. They were tiny little tracers in the heel of our foot that broadcast our location and some basic biometric data to a system that ran through the Batcomputer. 

No matter where we were or when, we could always find each other. We generally only used the program for emergencies, like when someone went missing or off the grid. We never used it just to track someone else down. We all had an unspoken boundary we tried not to cross in the name of having something resembling to privacy and a normal life.

Right now, though. I didn’t care about boundaries

Glancing down at the screen on my bike, I realized that I didn’t recognize the address where Tim was right now. 

It was getting to be close to eleven at night. The streets were dark and the air had the chilly bite that characterized the Gotham City in early autumn. The leaves were just starting to fall from the trees and my Ducati kicked them up in a flurry on the road behind me as I sped off down the highway.

I was still fuming by the time I pulled up outside the row home the GPS indicated Tim was inside. The place was just off campus, obviously student housing. The lawn was sparse and the street was quiet this time of night, only lit by the street lamps that lined the sidewalk.

I pursed my lips as I cut the engine to my bike. Shaking my head, I pulled off my helmet and reached down for my phone. 

**I’m outside. Come out. Or I will come in.**

I watched the text program until the read receipt came through, looking up at the house, I saw a curtain move to the side as Tim looked out at me.

My phone chimed as a text came through from Tim.

**Coming.**

It took several minutes before the front door of the house opened. Tim was framed in the doorway along with the girl, Zoanne, I saw him with the other day. They hugged, briefly, and Tim leaned down to give the girl a kiss on the cheek. He gave her an airy wave goodbye as he walked down the steps to my motorcycle.

Tim was limping, almost imperceptibly, as he moved toward me. The expression on his face was stormy and grim. Rather than coming over to the side of my bike and sliding on behind me, like I wanted, Tim walked in front of my bike. He leaned over the front tire and braced himself on the handlebars before shifting in close to face me.

“What. The. Fuck. Dick.” Tim bit out and I could see he was almost as angry as I was feeling just then. 

Which, honestly, just made me madder.

“You need to learn to answer your phone.”

“How did you even find me?” Tim hissed, clearly furious with me. 

I leaned back and crossed my arms over my chest.

“The GPS.”

“The chip? Are you kidding? That’s a huge violation of my privacy, you asshole.”

“Like I said, you need to learn to answer your phone.”

“You need to learn to take a hint. I’m studying.”

“Studying? Yeah right. Who is that girl?”

“Why. Are. You. Even. Here.” 

“Damain said--”

“Why the fuck are you talking to Damian about--”

I couldn’t stand it. I interrupted him. 

“Why aren’t you talking to me?”

Tim paused then. I could see him go pale, his expression blank, even in the dim light from the street lamps above us. It was a momentary pause. Within seconds his expression shifted, he gave a slight eye roll, and let out a breath while shaking his head.

“I’ve been busy, you know that. I have school in--”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“What?”

“That’s not what this is. You’re not too busy. Don’t lie to me.”

Tim moved back, pushing away from the handlebars on my bike and straightening. Putting distance between us.

“Dick--”

“Don’t. Lie.”

“I don’t know what to say to you right now, because you’re clearly not being rational--”

“I want you to explain to me why you’ve suddenly decided not to be there when I need you or want to talk.”

“You want to know. Why I decided. Not to be there. For you.” Tim repeated back to me, his voice stilted, fury clearly barely suppressed.

But then I was mad too.

“Yes. I think you owe me an answer.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? I owe you an answer? I owe you?” Tim hissed.

I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Tim this mad. The thing about Tim being mad is that he had a temper and he knew it. So he did everything he could to keep it in check. He tried to keep his voice even and his expression schooled, he meditated and negotiated. But every once in a while, after Bruce had done something spectaruluarly dumb, Tim would lose his patience, but he wouldn’t raise his voice. Instead, he would speak in an even tone of voice, but each word seemed like a sharp angry hiss.

He’d never done that with me. Not before this.

“You. Left. Me,” Tim bit out every word like each one hurt him to say. “You left me in that cell. You left me to die. When I needed you. When I needed you most. You. Never. Came.”

Realization hit me like a flood of ice water, knocking the breath from my lungs and the words from my mouth.

Tim was panting now, with the effort to keep his voice even and his emotions in check. 

“Tim--” I started but he cut me off before I could even think of what to say next.

“I waited for you. I waited for you. I waited and waited and waited and waited,” Tim said and each word sounded almost like a sob.

“I--”

“You what, Dick? You what? Did you even look for me? Did you even try?”

“We… We thought you were dead. I thought you were dead.”

Tim put a hand to his face in frustration, scrunching his eyes shut and shaking his head as he made a small, frustrated sound in the back of his throat.

“Ok, yeah. No, I get it. There irony there is not lost on me…”

At that, Tim let out a broken, bitter little laugh that actually hurt to hear.

We just stayed there, after that. Me, sitting on the back of my bike and Tim standing right in front of me, but so far from my reach that I didn’t know how I would ever get him back.

“I have no idea what to say, Tim.”

“No fucking kidding you don’t know what to say.”

“I’m here, now.”

“Yes, you’ve made that abundantly and intrusively clear.”

“Is she your girlfriend?”

“Do you care if she is?”

“Yes.”

“And you think that is the thing you should be fixating on, just now? In this very particular moment in time?”

“No one ever said I was smart.”

“Yeah, there’s a fucking reason…”

“I love you, Tim.”

Tim took a deep breath and let it out in a long, defeated sigh.

“Right now, Dick. I don’t think I care.”

And then he walked away from me.

He went back into her house and he didn’t look back.

^*^*^*^*

If I had to be honest with myself, I did not do well focusing over the course of the next few weeks. Guilt, stress, and worry all conspired to keep me from sleeping well. I lay in bed, tossing and turning, fixating on Tim and what he said and how he felt and who he was with. 

When I finally did fall asleep at night, I’d have these blurry, twisted dreams.

Tonight was no different. I finally fell asleep after hours of tossing and turning. The dreams came fast and vicious. Images of Tim throwing himself against the walls of a cell over, and over as he called out for me overwhelmed me. The sight of Tim’s fearful face, twisted with pain and calling out my name blended with other scenes of Tim with his arms wrapped around Zoanne. Naked, their limbs intertwined as they kissed and moved together in a desperate embrace that made me feel aroused and terrified all at the same time. 

I woke, sweaty and nauseous, too hard too ignore but too sick to want to do anything about it.

Kicking off my sheets, I stalked over to my wardrobe, to pull out my uniform. I tugged it on over my sweat damp boxers, fastened my belt and slipped into my boots. Grabbing an extra packet of explosives from a bin, I put them in my belt before picking up the keys to my motorcycle.

I was on the back of my bike and speeding off on to the chilly streets of Bludhaven within minutes. 

I shouldn’t have been out. I shouldn’t have been on my bike. I shouldn’t even have been awake right now.

I was exhausted and frustrated and terrified that I’d ruined everything Tim and I had built. Since Tim had become Robin, he had been the one constant in my life, even more than Bruce or Wally or Donna. Tim had always been there. No matter what happened, it was always the same…

Me and Tim against the world.

My mind wasn’t in the game tonight. I wasn’t going anywhere in particular to do anything I had planned. None of this was about thought or consideration or purpose. It was all about pain and impulse and the need to forget.

I was just looking for a fight because I needed someone else to hurt as much as I did just then. 

Fortunately for me, finding something to punch in Bludhaven wasn’t a difficult thing to do. 

I threw myself into fight after fight, letting bitterness and pain drive me more than any desire to keep the bad guys off the streets.

One fight led to another, which led to another, which led to another.

I was exhausted, bruised and more than a little bloody when I finally came on Killer Croc.

I have no idea when he decided to float downstream from Gotham City into Bludhaven. I really should have cared about it more than I did. I caught sight of the guy unexpectedly just as he knocking over an impromptu gambling ring. He took one look at me, and started running.

So I ran after him.

I caught up to him just before he got to the docks that led out to the bay. The fight between us was fast and it was brutal. Maybe Croc could sense that I wasn't in any mood to pull any punches or maybe I was already too beaten down for a fight like this, but it felt like Croc came at me harder than he ever had before.

Snapping, growling, scratching and kicking, Croc attacked in a flurry of violence and ferocity. I gave back to him in kind.

Not even bothering with my fists, I used my escrima sticks to hit him where I knew his scales were soft and vulnerable. I used the edges of the sticks, not the broad sides, to break as many bones and rip as much muscle as possible.

When he went down, I hit him with a taser, then with a gas bomb, then with wingdings and ropes. Roaring, Croc came back at me, breaking free from the bindings I was trying to capture him with.

With a move much faster than I was expecting, Croc grabbed at me, picking me up by the neck and the thigh, he lifted me over his head. With a desperate shout, Croc threw me through the air.

I put my arms out instinctively, trying to catch myself, slow down, break the fall that I knew was coming. All I managed to do was drop my escrima sticks as I hit the ground hard and went rolling out across the dock. The weight of my body on the moldering wood was too much for the aging structure. The boards broke and I fell through, splinters from the dock tearing through my uniform and ripping open my skin.

I tried to catch myself on the boards as I fell through, but they crumbled under my hands and I fell and fell and fell. I hit the water harder than I expected. The salt stung at my cuts and got into my nose as I struggled to make my stunned, exhausted body move and swim.

Kicking up to the surface, I fought against the tide as best I could, but the water swept me, inevitably and invariably inland to the twisted series of tubes that feed Bludhaven’s sewer lines. The rush of the current pushed me along, deep into the tunnels.

I kicked and pushed myself to the sides of the tubing, hands scrabbling at the smooth sides of the pipes that carried water back into the city. Desperately hoping the tide was going out and not coming in, I worked to keep my head above water and swim along as best I could, until I found a safe surface to get out on.

My exhausted limbs grew heavier and weaker the longer I worked to keep my head above water. All I could do was tell myself to keep kicking, keep looking, the tunnels would end soon and I would find a place to rest.

Soon, I would be able to rest.

Just as I was starting to wonder how much more of this I had in me, I saw a light appear in the tunnel in front of me. A manhole cover was lifted and a rope dropped down. Sliding smoothly down the rope came the bright flash of Tim's uniform, seeming to almost bring a clear red dawn to the darkness of the tunnels.

I heard him call my name and I shouted back to him, wordless and desperate. He spotted me right away and as the water carried me past him, he reached out an arm and grabbed on to mine as he pulled me up. I wrapped my arms around him and he must have hit something on the rope we were using because it retracted and pulled us up and out into the city above.

Hours had passed as I floated through Bludhaven's sewers and dawn had already broken when Tim pulled me out of that dark tunnel. I collapsed on the street, panting and gasping as he replaced the sewer cover.

Tim grabbed me then, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and tugging me into a standing position. He half carried me for about a quarter of a mile. When I finally caught sight of my Ducati, waiting for the two of us, I almost cried.

Tim got on the front of the motorcycle and I climbed on the back after him. We pulled on our helmets and Tim kicked on the engine. I wrapped my arms around Tim's waist and leaned over, pressing myself fully to the length of his back.

He felt...

He felt perfect.

He had come for me.

He was here.

He was here, now, when I needed him, so warm and so alive under my hands, even though he said he wouldn't be, he didn't care if I loved him, and that I hadn't come when he needed me.

He was here.

My exhaustion coupled with the roar of the bike and warmth of Tim's body pressed to mine lulled me into a half conscious, half dreaming state that wasn't quite sleep and wasn't quite a trance and wasn't quite alert either.

I don't even know how Tim got me back inside my base. The next thing I realized I was stepping off of the bike and pulling the helmet up over my head. He cupped my jaw with one warm, gloveless hand and looked into my eyes.

"You don't look like you have a concussion," Tim said, eyeing me seriously.

I tried to shake my head, but it hurt too much, so I just winced in answer.

Tim pursed his lips and shook his head, pulling back from me and standing. He took a few steps back and gestured for me to get up. He helped me up into my apartment. He dug around for my first aid kit and tossed my ruined uniform away while I showered and dried off.

I pulled on a pair of boxer shorts before sitting down on the corner of my bed so Tim could patch up my injuries.

"Thank you. For coming for me," I said, watching him disinfect a series of cuts on my upper thigh.

Tim didn't answer, just kept working with easy, practiced precision.

"How did you find me?" I asked as he expertly tugged a splinter from one of the cuts.

Tim didn't answer, just shook his head and kept working .

"How did you know I needed help?" I asked.

Tim still didn't answer. He just grabbed my calf with a firm hand and applied a thick layer of disinfectant and large gauze bandage to a particularly nasty scrape.

"I'm glad you came," I said.

Tim's mouth tightened in a thin line as he finished with my legs and moved to work on my chest. He didn't speak the whole time except to tell me to move this way or that or warn me when something might hurt.

When he finally finished, Tim sat back on his heels and looked up at me consideringly for a long moment.

"Thank you," I said. "For coming. For helping. I-- Thank you."

"Watch those cuts for infection," was all Tim said.

He stood then, as if to leave. I reached out and grabbed him by the forearm, tugging him back towards me.

"How did you find me?" I asked again. "How did you know I needed you."

Tim didn’t answer for a long moment, just stood there stiff-spined and nearly glowering

"One of my systems,” he finally said, “alerts me when someone's biometrics spike for any extended period of time. Yours spiked, stayed elevated, and when you didn't return home before dawn..." 

Tim trailed off with a shrug and made to pull his arm away from my grip.

I didn't let go.

"You came for me."

I could feel Tim stiffen where he was standing next to me, muscles going tense and spine straightening further.

"Of course I came," he said, letting out a long deep breath.

Then I said the only thing I could think to say.

"I love you, Tim."

Tim closed his eyes and shook his head, letting out a long low breath. I got to my feet, standing next to him in my darkened bedroom.

"I love you," I said again tugging him close to me, pulling him into my arms.

Tim was stiff against me. He didn't relax into me or hug me back. He just stood there while I held him. Closing my eyes, I pressed my face into the hair just behind his ear and breathed in deep.

"I love you," I repeated again. "I love you and I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I wasn't there. I'm so sorry, Tim. I'm so sorry."

The sound Tim made after that was almost a desperate, broken sob. He melted into me then, pressing his face to my shoulder, his arms coming up to hold me fiercely.

"I love you," I said again and again and again until Tim was shaking in my arms, holding me tighter than he ever had before.

"I-- I love you too," he finally said back, voice thick and muffled by my shoulder. "I love you too. I always-- Always-- And I just needed-- I just needed--"

Tim broke off, shaking his head and pressing his face back into my shoulder. I could feel the ragged breaths he was taking and how quickly his heart pounded in his chest as he clutched me close.

I reached up a hand to gently grip Tim's chin, tilting his head back so he finally looked at me. Tears rimmed his eyes and his hands trembled on my back as he fought to control his breathing. He finally closed his eyes tight and shook his head as he grasped for the frayed edges of his control.

“You just needed us,” I said to him softly. “You needed us. You and me against the world.”

Tim nodded then, looking vulnerable, heart broken, and destroyed. His flushed face and trembling lips made me want to hold him tighter and never let him go.

Ever again.

The notion of kissing him was never a conscious thought I had. It was just something I needed to do, something I had to do, something that drove me and compelled me and pushed me.

I pressed my mouth to his in a gentle, easy kiss. He huffed out a soft breath in surprise, his mouth opening slightly under mine. I used the opportunity to deepen the kiss between us. Pressing my advantage I tilted his head and kissed him harder.

Tim's hands convulsed against my back, fingers digging into my muscles almost painfully hard. He kissed me back, moaning into my mouth and holding me tight to him.

Just having him like this in my arms forced me to a place of irrationality. The feel of him, his tight, hard body pressed to mine, his trembling hands, his soft, his wet mouth drove me wild. I tumbled us on to the bed, Tim moving with me easily. Rolling him under me, I grabbed his arms, pinning them over his head with one hand while my other worked at the catches of his uniform.

"Dick... Dick, please I--" Tim's voice sounded as desperate as I felt.

Tim spread his legs until I was nestled between them. He lifted one to wrap around me, using the strength of his thigh to press us together. I felt the hard heat of his erection pressed against mine and he gasped as I pressed kisses down his neck.

Arching up against me, Tim cried out my name, desperate, almost wild.

I pulled off his uniform as quickly as could, needing to feel him. Needing more of his skin, his taste, his desperate sounds.

I kicked off my boxers as I tossed his uniform to the ground and the rest was just skin and sweat and panting, broken pleas.

He begged me to hold him, not to ever let go. He begged me to kiss him until he couldn't breathe. He begged me touch him everywhere I could reach. He begged me to move with him, rock against him until... until...

We both came with loud desperate shouts, bucking together in the tangled mess of my sheets. Tim held on to me through it, and when it was over, he didn't let me go.

I rolled us into a more comfortable position, tucking Tim in close by my side and pressing my face into the hair at the top of his head. Tim's heart was still beating fast in his chest and his hands shook as he moved in next to me.

We lay there, until our breathing evened out and Tim's heart rate normalized.

"I'm sorry," I said again, not sure exactly in that moment what I was apologizing for.

There was so much...

The sex, dragging Tim into my fights and injuries, for not being there when he needed me, being a deeply jealous and stalkery asshole...

"Yeah, I--" Tim started and then broke off before starting again. "I know. It's not your fault. It's ok. I'm... I'm ok..."

"Yeah, you know how I know that you're ok? I can tell from how you're apparently obsessively monitoring my biometrics."

"Yeah, I mean... In my defense. It's not just you," 

“Who else?” I asked, feeling my jealousy rise again. 

Tim shrugged as best he could with my arms wrapped around him.

“Everyone, really. Bruce, Jay, Cass, Steph, Duke, Harper, even Damian. Once things settled down I wrote a program to alert me if any of you had any dangerous fluctuations or elevated biometrics for certain time periods.”

“And you decided to do this because…”

Tim shrugged.

“I mean, if people would stop getting kidnapped, transported to other dimensions and falling in sewers at 5am, maybe I wouldn’t have to.”

I couldn’t help but smile at that. Classic Tim-Joke. I pressed a kiss to his temple and squeezed him close for a few long moments.

“You’re scared,” I said. “You’re scared it’ll happen again, to someone else, so you’re trying to find new ways to keep us safe.”

“I’m always scared and I’m always trying to find ways to keep everyone safe,” Tim pointed out, wryly. “This isn’t new. It’s kind of my thing.”

“I’m scared too,” I confessed to him. “I’m scared of losing you again, letting you down again, hurting you again. I’m scared too.”

I pulled Tim on top of me then, settling him on my chest and tilting his face so he met my eyes.

“I love you, Tim. And I promise that from now on, no matter what, I’ll always come look for you.”

Tim swallowed hard and closed his eyes, nodding at my words. 

I rocked up and pressed another kiss to his soft, warm lips.

“Always,” I promised, kissing him gently again and again. “You and me against the world.”

“You and me against the world,” he agreed, and kissed me back. “Always.”


End file.
